“We heard clearly from agents and franchise owners that managing listings across multiple platforms creates unnecessary friction in an already fast-moving business and a rapidly evolving industry,” said Chris Czarnecki, CEO and President, KW. “Our continued collaboration with Cotality is about simplifying one of the most important workflows in real estate: listing management. By reducing duplicate entry across platforms and creating a more centralized experience, we’re helping our affiliated agents save time and gain greater control over their listings while creating maximum exposure opportunities for their clients. The BLX platform will afford our affiliated agents maximum flexibility in how they manage their listings distributions, in a format that they are highly familiar with, which in turns creates leverage for their business and gives them a competitive advantage in the marketplace.”
Interesting move. Feels like Cotality is seeing something on the horizon most are not. We’ve heard the arguments from brokers about “duplicate entry” syndrome for years, even back in the Upstream days. Which is as far as the comparison to Upstream I think this news deserves. But what I think moved the needle for Cotality is Zillow touting how many brokers were signing up to participate in their Zillow Previews offering. That meant a lot of agents/brokers were entering listings in Zillow first, not Matrix. No bueno, if you are selling MLS software.
I’ve heard some MLS organizations not pleased about hearing the news last minute, which I can sympathize with. But I’m not sure those MLS organizations are offering the same courtesy when they announce a new front end of choice solutions in their markets or when they start offering competitive services. “It’s show business, not show friends” I like to say.
Overall, I’m still a bit skeptical about the product offering itself. How many brokers will actually buy this? Cotality is owned by Stone Point Capital, and Stone Point also owns a chunk of Keller Williams too, so that deal was probably easier to put together, than HomeServices. And what’s going to motivate the agent to change their workflow?
Call it a hunch, but I think we’re only seeing Act One.
Interesting that they are going around their primary customer. We’re looking at several Cotality products but I’m not sure I can count on them if they are joining the “MLS is a problem” bandwagon. Seems shortsighted.